Three weeks passed before we made any further progress. A clue, but
always an imaginary clue, would prick us into feverish activity, which
invariably led us nowhere.
But toward the end of the third week of our search, St. Hilary came to
my rooms one afternoon, triumphant. He had actually made a discovery.
And this discovery proved, beyond the peradventure of a doubt, not only
that the clock had a story to tell, not only that the twelve hours
actually did constitute twelve links of a chain, but that somewhere, in
the background of each hour, there was some mark corresponding to a like
mark in some part of Venice.
“It is only a little clue,” he said with affected modesty, “a very
little one. But who knows that it may not be the wedge that shall pry
open our treasure-box?”
“Produce this wedge by all means,” I said skeptically.
“This morning, about half past ten, I found myself in the Campo San
Salvatore–you know it, the little square with the house of the gaily
painted balcony and the roses on the north side. At the left of the
square, going toward San Marco, perhaps you remember, there is a boys’
school. You may have observed a respectable old servant who walks
solemnly up to the big bell on the left of the door, leading a little
boy by the hand. He always rings the bell at eight o’clock in the
morning. When the door is opened he hands the school-books to his
charge, shakes his finger at him, and toddles off to the seller of
sweetened water at the corner for a drink.”
“Has this respectable old man anything to do with your precious
discovery?” I asked impatiently.
“A great deal to do with it. This morning, as I was saying, I caught
sight of my old man and the young gentleman. My eyes dwelt on them
affectionately while the servant rang the big bell, and shook his
forefinger at the smiling boy. Now observe, my dear Hume; if I hadn’t
met my old man, I should have hurried through the square. In that case I
should have missed the boy with the fish.”
“Oh, there is a boy with a fish, is there?” I remarked.
“Yes,” he said severely, “there is a boy with a fish. While I stood
watching the old man, a stream of curses and abuse in the Venetian
dialect disturbed my pleasant reflections. I turned, and there, at the
open door of a large house, stood a barefooted boy with a flat basket of
fish. Two servants were shrieking at him like the very devil. The fish
was bad, perhaps, or the boy had given the wrong change. I do not know.
The point is that the old servant, the seller of sweetened water, who
left his stand, and the dark-eyed gipsies at the well, who left their
buckets, came to look on. The bad little boy with the fish didn’t like
this publicity. Especially when a majestic policeman with a long feather
in his round hat––”
I groaned. “Is the majestic policeman with the long feather in his round
hat absolutely essential?”
“The majestic policeman with the long feather in his round hat is
absolutely essential”, said St. Hilary with an amused drawl.
“Even the long feather in the round hat!” I could not resist asking.
“Especially the long feather in the round hat, as you will see if you
are patient For this majestic policeman came on the bad little boy quite
unawares, and, seizing his ear, he made him a prisoner. Then the
youngster wrenched himself free, only to run headlong into another
policeman who was coming from the Calle San Rosario. The _spighetti_,
compelled to double on his tracks, plunged recklessly into the first
opening that offered. This happened to be the gate leading into the
school garden, that chanced to be wide open. Now, we thought, the
youngster will surely be caught, and when the policeman with the long
feather in his hat languidly strolled after his prey, the rest of the
square pressed respectfully after to see the fun. But the young
ragamuffin had the policeman now quite at his mercy, for he lost himself
immediately among threescore of boys at play. So that presently, while
the policeman was vainly searching the garden for him, the bad little
boy regained the entrance. He cast one cautious eye into the square to
be sure that the second policeman had disappeared, and then, after the
manner of small boys the world over, he held his thumb and fingers
extended at the majestic policeman, and called him naughty names.”
“A beautiful little sketch of low life in Venice,” I said sarcastically.
“But I fail to see even yet the pertinency of the long feather in the
round hat.”
“Patience, my friend. When he had sufficiently insulted the majestic
policeman in this manner, he took one of his mullets, and hurling it
with precision–-–”
“Struck the round hat with the long feather.”
“–Missed the round hat with the long feather,” corrected St. Hilary with
calm precision, “but struck the long feather on the round hat. It hung
pitifully, a draggled and wobegone bit of finery; and those of us who
had followed him into the court naturally regarded it with respectful
sympathy. And then my heart came into my mouth. The broken feather was
pointing, as it were a human hand, straight to a round––”
“Not another round hat!” I cried in despair.
“–Straight to a round stone let into the wall. And on this round stone
was carved a camel’s head, the precise image of the camel’s head in this
photograph of the background of the fourth hour.”
St. Hilary looked at me in triumph, and, picking up the photograph,
thrust it into my hand.
“The precise image of the camel’s head in this photograph,” I repeated,
trying to grasp the significance of that statement. “But why should you
think that the clock-maker copied the head of that particular camel in
the background of the fourth hour? My dear St. Hilary, your introduction
was too elaborate for your news to be striking. I expected something
more startling.”
“But, idiot,” cried the dealer, exasperated, “look at the photograph. Do
you see nothing peculiar about that camel’s head?”
I took the magnifying-glass and studied the photograph carefully.
“Nothing–unless it be the eye. Perhaps it is a defect in the
workmanship. But it looks–yes, it certainly does look as if the camel
was blind.”
“The camel carved on the stone let into the wall of the house is blind
also.”
“This _is_ news, if it is not the merest chance,” I cried.
“And before the house was used as a school, it was called the House of
the Blind Camel.”
“The House of the Blind Camel!” I repeated excitedly. “By Jove, St.
Hilary, does that mean you have stumbled on one of the twelve
landmarks?”
“Patience. Look at your photograph again. What else do you see in the
background of the fourth hour?”
“A well,” I answered promptly. “If you have found the well, there can be
no doubt.”
“And I _have_ found the well. Look at the photograph. What is the design
of the beading round the curb?”
“A looped wreath with pomegranates between each loop.”
“The well in the school garden has a beading of the same design. But
study the photograph a moment–look carefully at the second and third
pomegranates from the left. Do you notice anything peculiar?”
“No, I see nothing peculiar about them.”
“The more we study the history of this clock, Hume, the more I am
impressed with the fact that the eye is a most unreliable organ. We
rarely see a thing as it actually is; we see it as we expect it to be.
Take the magnifying-glass and look at those second and third
pomegranates carefully.”
“I see now,” I cried. “They are not pomegranates; they are two
rosettes.”
“And there are two rosettes between two of the loops of the well in the
garden. You grasp the importance of the discovery, I hope. It means that
we have to study the photographs from quite a different point of view.
All we have to do now is to find in the various backgrounds some
significant mark that is paralleled in the various landmarks about
Venice that lead to the casket.”
“Are you not a little too sanguine, St. Hilary? These twelve marks are
often most obscure. In the fifth and the eleventh hours there are no
marks whatever.”
“That is true,” replied St. Hilary thoughtfully. “This discovery by
itself is quite useless. If we could have found the mark of the fifth
hour we could have begun at this fourth hour. But since that is
missing––”
“And I suppose it is useless for us to think of beginning with the
landmarks of the last hours, even if we could find them in the
background. The last of the landmarks would be almost certainly found
not in the open air, but in the interior of some palace.”
“There is another difficulty that has just occurred to me,” continued
St. Hilary. “We have been taking it for granted that we start from the
Pillar of San Marco in the Piazzetta. I still think that it is
reasonable that the search begins there. If that be true, we find
ourselves in the fourth hour at the Campo San Salvatore, but the
landmark of the sixth hour brings us back to the balcony of San Marco in
the Piazza again. In the next hour we simply stroll a few feet away to
the Campanile. In that case the mad clock-maker has been leading us
about in a senseless circle. He may have been mad, but he was not as mad
as that.”
“Then you think the wisest thing is for us to search for the second
landmark? It does not seem particularly promising. So far as I can see,
it is merely a curtain, with a conventional decoration of what appears
to be more like two husks of corn than anything else I can think of. One
of these husks is perpendicular; the other horizontal.”
“I see no reason why we should not begin with the sixth hour,” asserted
St. Hilary.
“I think we may begin at any one of them with an equal chance of
success,” I said hopelessly. “This search of ours is like nothing so
much as hunting for twelve needles in twenty thousand haystacks.”
And it turned out that I was right. For several days we made no farther
progress. We became so utterly fatigued and weary of looking for we knew
not what that we saw nothing. We took to wandering vaguely about the
canals and the streets. A restlessness urged us out at all hours in
search of these vague landmarks. Every morning after breakfast we set
out somewhere. Every evening we returned discouraged. And so a month
passed, and we were no nearer to the da Sestos casket.